The Honeybee's Lament
by roisaber
Summary: One of the hostesses in the Honeybee Inn is asked to give a statement to the Midgar police. She offers an account of the day she had to inadvertently entertain a wanted terrorist, and the trouble the conflict between A.V.A.L.A.N.C.H.E. and the Shinra caused for her and her daughter.


**After Incident Report - Witness Interview**

**Witness: Melissa Barnes**

**Incident: TK42-1**

**Taking Officer: Lt. Guss Wales**

**Value Rating: 2.5/10**

**Memo: **I was assigned to gather reports from witnesses and bystanders in regards to incident TK42-1, the sabotage of the Sector 7 plate and its subsequent collapse into the Sector 7 special redevelopment zone. This report contains the testimony of Midgar citizen Melissa Barnes. She was not directly involved in the incident, and it probably has minimal value, though she does report having seen the terrorist Cloud Strife during the course of her daily duties. My recommendation is that this report be forwarded to the Mayor's office to see if it has any value as propaganda.

-Signed Lt. Guss Wales

**Testimony: **At work, my name is Cristal, but when I get home, my friends call me Melissa and my daughter Iris knows me as Mommy. There's no reason to mince words: I'm a whore. A prostitute. That's right, I have sex for money, and I work at Don Cornero's Honeybee Inn. Yesterday was basically the worst day of my life.

First, let me get some of the basics out of the way. Being a prostitute really isn't as bad as you'd think, and believe it or not, the Boss is pretty good to his working girls like me. We do represent the backbone of his business after all. Plus, he's always had an appreciation for the female form that sometimes even gets ahead of his greed. He's not that bad as a lover owing to his long years of experience. I don't know about the other girls, but he makes me lean over the side of his bed, and his fat stomach pounds against my ass whenever he chooses me for his evening lechery, but apart from that, I don't really have any complaints. As for the clients, it's probably the same as in any other line of work. A few are really nice and genuinely make me feel special. A few of them are real creeps, but Don Cornero keeps security tight and I know there's always a bouncer on call if a customer gets too rough. Most of them are just, you know, regular guys. I get a lot of low-level Shinra employees looking to let off a little stress. Anyway, that's enough background. Here's what happened.

I got the midday shift that day, from 10 am to 6 in the afternoon. I like those shifts the best, because they allow me to get home early enough to make dinner for my daughter and keep her from having to spend too much time alone in our apartment. The first few hours went by like normal, you know? I don't really remember the clients, which is a good thing, because it meant none of them were assholes. Well, when I was almost done with my shift, that's when "she" came in.

I could tell at once there was something weird about the "girl." Her face was a little too masculine and her breasts were a little too small and stiff. She was gussied up like a ridiculous trollop, and that's coming from me, an actual prostitute. But I was busy, so I put the whole thing out of my mind, you know? I took care of my next client and then went into the dressing room to freshen up. And that's when I got my first unpleasant surprise of the day.

"She," of course, was actually a he, and boy was he a weirdo. He came into the dressing room and started trying to chat up all the girls. Well, I tried to ignore him without being impolite, because he's a client after all and what can you do? Don Cornero has a strict policy about hospitality and I couldn't afford to lose my job by being rude to a customer, no matter how outlandishly he was acting. But he just would not leave us alone! One of the other girls who works with me, Sara, finally gave into his absurd demand. He just wouldn't go away until Sara promised to give him a sexy makeover. I rolled my eyes and got back to work as quickly as I could – at least with the guys who come in for a tumble, you know what you're getting into from the start.

So I put the whole thing out of my mind, along with the two other new girls who came in that day. Most women really aren't cut out for entertaining work, and they drop off the face of the earth the first time a man gets cruel with them; they get scared. I'll say this for the Boss, he doesn't put up with any shit – you always know you can count on him if a client gets out of hand. So I figured, well, those girls probably won't be around long, so what's the point? Boy was I right, but not in the way I expected. Right after finishing up with my last client of the day, I heard a terrifying ruckus from upstairs.

I don't like to think I'm a coward. But it sounded like fighting, and that's man's work. I hid in the dressing room with the other terrified girls. So that was the second shock of the day. The sound of fighting eventually died down, and I hurried to dress in my street clothes and then I got out of there as soon as I could.

The next unpleasant surprise was that the trains were still on high alert thanks to those assholes in A.V.A.L.A.N.C.H.E. I mean, blowing up a reactor? I was without power for _three days_ in the chilly autumn, and my daughter Iris got sick from the cold and I was terrified she was going to come down with pneumonia. The Shinra only made things worse by setting up checkpoints everywhere and randomly searching the trains. Sometimes I think they both deserve each other; can't they just leave the rest of us alone!? So it took me _forever_ to get on a train to Sector 4.

They call it a slum, but Sector 4 isn't actually so bad. It's dark because the plate above blocks out the sun, but of the lower city it's the Sector that's best lit and best maintained. I make enough to live there with my daughter which is another perk of my sometimes demanding job. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, I heard the worst sound I've ever heard. It was like an earthquake – so loud that I could feel it before I could hear it. The train's power went out, and the cars went entirely dark. I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. At first, I had no idea what happened, but then one of the Shinra locomotive engineers came into our car and told us that A.V.A.L.A.N.C.H.E. had dropped a plate on the lower city, but that he didn't have any more information than that.

I've never been so scared in my entire life. Not for me, but for my little girl. I'd always hoped that my job would allow me to make enough money to give Iris the childhood I never had, you know? And since the engineer didn't know which plate had fallen, I naturally assumed the worst. I was glad that the train car was only occasionally lit by the passing beam of the Shinra's flashlight, so that nobody would know that it was me who was sobbing so hard in the darkness. I couldn't help myself. I wept like a little girl, and there was no one who could comfort me.

It was two hours before the train started up again, and before that, every single person had to submit to a security screening. I was checked by a leering brute of a man, and he made a special effort to check my breasts and down below for bombs, as if I had a weapon stuffed up my panties! I wanted to slap him, but that's assaulting an officer, and my daughter is only 6 and she needs her Mommy to take care of her, not go to jail. I was still terrified for Iris, because none of the Shinra told us anything, though I could tell the train engineer was just as worried as the rest of us. We finally learned that it was Sector 7 that was destroyed when we got clearance to head for the next rail station.

I had mixed feelings, but I'm ashamed to admit that I mostly felt relief. I know a lot of people lost loved ones that day, but I was so happy to know that my daughter was safe that I could barely think about it. Why do A.V.A.L.A.N.C.H.E torment us so much? What did we ever do to them? I'm just a normal woman, trying to live my life and take care of my little girl as best as I can. It's stupid for them to set bombs and blow up plates and kill people no matter what their "cause" is supposed to be. Oh, and here's the real kicker. When I finally got home and turned on the news to find out what'd happened, I discovered that the cross-dressing weirdo from earlier that day was a member of A.V.A.L.A.N.C.H.E and a wanted terrorist! I guess it just goes to show.


End file.
